So You Wrote a Book? author series

So You Wrote a Book?

Many years ago, before I was a “real writer”, I envisioned a day when I would have a bookshelf filled with only books by my friends. Today, that bookshelf is about to collapse under its own weight! The So You Wrote a Book? series is my way to shine the spotlight on some of the amazing work being written and to applaud our collective mission to create art that moves us and those around us. Thanks for reading!

So You Wrote a Book? Paul Beckman

Paul Beckman has a new collection of flash fiction, Kiss, Kiss! Aren’t familiar with Beckman’s work? Here’s a taste: drunk mothers at weddings, grandmas who play strip poker, “Too Many Uncles”, a man whose body parts are falling off, a man whose right hand is battling his left, and “Goodbye, Already”, where dead family members are still showing up to family functions. These and so many more make up the delightful, dark smorgasbord that is Kiss Kiss.

Nancy Stohlman: Paul, can you tell us what the book is about in exactly six words?

Paul Beckman: These are not your mother’s shorts-stories.

Nancy: This is not your first book. You have also published other collections of flash fiction including Peek and Come! Meet My Family and Other Stories. How is Kiss Kiss different from your other books?

Paul: The stories are darker in substance and in humor.

While many of your stories are tongue-in-cheek humor, you also have these intensely serious ones, like “Daddy’s Way” (a micro about a beating) or” Father Panik Village” (one of several stories set in the projects). To me it seems like the perfect balance—just when we think we have you figured out, you surprise us with something completely different. Does that happen automatically or do you have to craft that balance?

For a collection without connected stories I go through my published and unpublished stories and lay out the ones, that while not connected, still seem to have a thread of feeling while reading, that flow together by my voice.

You go back and forth between realism and surrealism almost seamlessly. And even your realism can have a touch of the absurd, from a strip poker-playing grandma all the way to a story like “TSA: Here to Serve” where the narrator finds himself in some sort of reality show after being pulled aside and waterboarded by the TSA at the airport. Many writers do one but not both well. Do you prefer realism or surrealism?

Okay, this may sound surreal but my writing is based in realism and while I’m writing I don’t consciously make a turn to surrealism–it’s only after the story is written do I realize the surrealism aspects to it. Take the TSA story: The real TSA people are constantly in the news for abusing their power and punishing people by making them miss their flights or suffer the indignities of being felt up and groped with the other passengers watching. How’s that so different from being on a TV reality show with a live audience?

Family–and all the ways family is functional/dysfunctional and unique—is a regular theme. In your books we meet wives and husbands and grandmothers and stepfathers and cousins and children and siblings and family dinners on the holidays. So…how does your real family react to all these stories of family?

Most of my family is gone now but their memories and mischegas live on. At one point when my first book was published (Come! Meet My Family) I invited cousins and an uncle to a reading and I read a story about a conflict between two aunts and a cup of black coffee. After the reading the cousins surrounded my Uncle wanting to know which of his seven sisters drank their coffee black. He said, “All of them.” which dashed their hopes of figuring out whose mother I was writing about. I can’t talk about my stories with my brother because he thinks I constantly do a hatchet job on our mother when, in reality, our memories and feelings being separated by four years in age allow me to write from a different vantage point about the mothers in my stories. We fiction writers steal behaviors, bits of dialogue, punishment, and praise overheard and incorporate these thing into our stories that are not as we’ve seen them. We adapt and get to play God. And it’s not only family–sometimes it’s friends who are sure they know other mutual friends or themselves who I’m writing about. I believe there are only dysfunctional families in the world only sometimes their dysfunctionality is out in the open and often it’s behind closed doors. What a great source of material–whether it’s my family or strangers.

Mirsky and his wife, Elaine, are two of your signature, reoccurring characters. Talk about the evolution of Mirsky and Elaine as characters in your work.

An early story that’s also in Come! Meet My Family, introduced Mirsky not knowing he would hang around me and feed me stories for all these years. In that story I think it was the only time I used his first name and later on I wanted to write a story about a character who was only known by his last name. I knew I wanted a strong two-syllable name so I drove to the cemetery where my relatives are buried and drove around looking at the headstones until I came upon a group of Mirsky headstones and that’s how Mirsky was born (or re-born). From there he and Elaine populated many of my stories through marriage, divorce, infidelities, and all things couples go through. He may or may not be my doppelganger, my foil, or my muse.

Okay, here’s the tough question: What is your favorite story in this collection and why?

“The Only Hope of the Jews” for a number of reasons: It may be the first story about growing up in the projects as a young Jewish kid, fighting the anti-Semite name-calling from kids who were only repeating words they heard from their parents or friends. The conflict between Mirsky and his mother over her not understanding what he had to endure so often and then have her blaming him for defending himself, the Jews of the world, and his family. My brother wouldn’t like this story either.

I’ve been your editor for many years so I get to see how you work behind the scenes. You always have a deluge of ideas and you’re always willing to take risks and try something new. You’re even willing to abandon ship and try again if necessary, which is sometimes how the best revisions happen. Can you talk about your process from idea to draft to revision. How does it happen for you?

Almost every story I write stars with a prompt or a word I saw or heard (I guess that’s a prompt also). Then I just start writing. I don’t know the story I’m writing and certainly not the ending. I put myself in the MC’s mind and let it rip. Sometimes it works (often times) and sometimes not and I start again. At times I know a sentence or three ahead of where I’m writing, but now always. I feel fortunate that my writing over the years has morphed into this position from when I first started and felt I had to know the whole story before I could write.

From there I wait a few days and then go back and try to tighten it up.

I’d like to say I read every story aloud to myself but there are times I don’t. When I do I catch more mistakes and that’s the best avenue for me for rewrites next to the following:

Nancy Stohlman edits the bulk of my stories. She’s smart, knows her subject, and knows me and my stories. There are times we don’t agree and she never pressures me to do it her way but she does explain her thinking. Often, the conflicts come with what and how I write a scene which Nancy picks up on and I clarify it. Neither of us want to spell everything out–the reader gets more out of a flash or micro story if they have to mentally fill in some white space.

This is your first book published by Truth Serum Press. Talk about your journey with Truth Serum and the road to publication for Kiss, Kiss.

I’d been submitting stories to Matt Potter’s Pure Slush Magazine for years and he wrote me about a story and knowing I was close to a new collection I told him he needed a book from someone like me to publish. He got right on board and between Nancy and me we came up with the stories that I put in the order I thought they should go, sent it to Nancy, reconfigured a couple and dropped a couple and she’d suggest a few I’d written that I should consider adding and then sent it to Matt. He sent me a contract and had some questions and suggestions on a couple of stories and we were off. He designed a cover and I sent him a photo I was considering for the cover and he left it up to me.

Looking at your list of acknowledgements is almost like reading a “list of places you should submit your work.” I love that you submit to a variety of journals, big and small and everything in between. What is your philosophy around publication? How do you decide where to submit? What would you tell another writer if they asked you where they should submit?

This is one of the toughest questions. I love Duotrope. It’s the best $50 a writer can spend to find markets, read editor’s reviews, and the all-important submission guidelines. If you read a story on line (and you should read as many as possible) and like the author’s writing check out the mag that published them and send them a story. I’ve gotten some of my best stories published that way–tracking other writers and in talking to them many have told me they do the same thing.

There are times I have trouble knowing where to submit certain stories and I ask fellow writers or take a shot at a new publication if I like their website and their requirements are reasonable. There are also many mags I love so I submit on a regular basis. Then there’s my “wish list” group of mags that I’m determined to get in and I keep trying. I’ve been fortunate enough to whittle down the list a bit.

Finally: What advice do you have for someone writing their first book?

Write, Read, support other writers who have written books in the same genre as you. And don’t be shy about submitting your work. A manuscript with a list of publications for stories in it is a factor in getting a good publisher.

Anything else you want to add?

Take some classes in the genre you write in or want to write in to expand your reach, I’ve taken a number of classes with Nancy Stohlman and classes with Kathy Fish, Robert Vaughan, Meg Tuite, and Meg Pokrass. I’ve gotten something out of every class both in my writing and in meeting kindred souls.

Paul Beckman’ new flash collection is Kiss Kiss, (Truth Serum Press). Paul had a micro story selected for the 2018 Norton Anthology New Micro Exceptionally Short Fiction. He was one of the winners in the 2016 The Best Small Fictions and his story “Mom’s Goodbye” was chosen as the winner of the 2016 Fiction Southeast Editor’s Prize. He’s widely published in the following magazines among others: Raleigh Review, Litro, Playboy, Pank, Blue Fifth Review, Matter Press, Pure Slush, Thrice Fiction, and Literary Orphans. Paul had a story nominated for the 2019 Best of Small Fiction and he hosts the monthly FBomb flash fiction series in NY at KGB’s Red Room.

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So You Wrote a Book? Katherine DiBella Seluja

Katherine DiBella Seluja has just released her new book, Gather the Night, which is largely an investigation into the complex emotions around mental illness and addiction, particularly as it affects the narrator’s brother, Lou. While much literature has been devoted to the stories of people suffering with these and other illnesses, there are fewer stories that speak to the experience of the bystander, those caught in the orbit of the illnesses and getting the midnight ER phone calls. Katherine allows us to feel the full scope of how these situations ripple into the tangential and shared spaces.

Nancy: Can you tell us what the book is about in exactly six words?

Katherine: Dissecting the impact of mental illness.

These poems have a story arc—the nostalgia of childhood, the illness(es), and the aftermath. Did you write them in this order or did the order come later? How long have you been writing these poems?

I did not write them in this order. They came in all kinds of ways. I did arrange them in something of a chronologic order when I was organizing the book. The first poem was written in 2010 and the manuscript was accepted for publication in 2016.

The character of Lou is battling not only schizophrenia but also alcoholism. Is this typical?

Sadly, it is extremely typical for individuals with moderate to severe behavioral illness to also suffer alcoholism and substance addiction. The effects of these addictions then confound the person’s symptoms. It can be very difficult to know what you’re looking at, like a large plate of tangled yarn.

In the book as in life the poems extend beyond Lou’s death: our poet narrator continues to live to the end of the book and then beyond the last page. I almost see it as a book of celebration for those who live as much as a eulogy for those departed. Your thoughts?

It was important for me to have the state beyond illness and beyond loss and grief represented in the book. The writing of this book helped me to get to that place. My brother died in 2012, when the book was about 2/3 written. Completing the book definitely helped me work my grief process. Yes, the narrator lives beyond the book but Lou does as well. The last poem in the book, Luminescent, hopefully conveys that sense.

How does being a nurse affect your understanding of Lou and others like him? Did your brother’s struggles inspire your choice to go into the healthcare field?

I’m sure Lou’s condition impacted my caregiver side but the thing that I’m most aware of that influenced my decision to become a nurse is that our mother was a nurse. Listening to her stories of WW II era nursing student antics (stealing the life-sized skeleton from the anatomy class on Halloween, making blue jello in nutrition class, blue jello in the 1940s!) convinced me this career was gonna’ be a barrel of fun.

In some poems I get almost a sense of sibling (survivor) guilt—why am I okay and you’re not?—which is so relate-able to so many survivors of tragedy. How do you reconcile these feelings?

It’s hard to be the sibling, especially the younger sibling, of any chronically ill person and not think, how come I didn’t get it? Will I get it later? And I’m not sure complete reconciliation of these feelings is ever available. Writing a book about it helps.

Do you feel a sense of completion with this subject matter or do you continue to return to it in your new material?

I kept writing about Lou in the year or two I was waiting for the book to be born (can you say, obsessed?) Interestingly, since the book has been published and I’ve been doing readings, I feel a much greater sense of peace regarding this part of my life.

What would Lou say if he read Gather the Night?

I’m pretty sure he would love it, but he’d probably ask me why I didn’t have a poem dedicated to his uncanny ability to quote long stretches of dialogue from The Godfather.

This is your first published book! Congrats! Has it been like you thought it would be? Can you tell us about your journey to publication with the University of New Mexico Press?

Thank you. I think it has been pretty much the way I imagined it. A very good poet-friend went through the entire publication process with UNM Press the year before me. So I got a bit of a sneak peek on the different stages of production. My publication journey began with the incredible good luck of landing in an amazing weekend workshop with Hilda Raz, the poetry editor for the press. It was one of those moments when you know you are exactly where you are supposed to be. The people I met and the work we did in that workshop were life changing. That workshop lead to a longer manuscript class. Toward the end of that class, I began to hope that maybe the book would find a home with UNM. But that required lots of patience and many more drafts. A great thing about UNM Press is that they utilize anonymous peer review as part of the acceptance process. This process can be somewhat grueling but in the end I think it is so well worth it, as you can feel confident about your final manuscript.

Finally: What advice do you have for someone writing their first book?

Be patient, take your time. We place so much pressure on ourselves to submit and publish. Honoring the process of creation and allowing the work to blossom is so important. We are not favoring a “culture of slow” these days, but it is vital to our creative process and the successful mining of deep life experiences. And if you’ve become an expert in patience while creating your book, you’ll be all prepared for the huge amount of patience generally required for production!

Anything else you want to add?

If you have something to say, say it. But be patient and work really hard. Set you standards ridiculously high. Stay true to your vision but be open to feedback from trusted sources. Don’t rush to publish. Let your work simmer. Let the flavors meld and the sauce thicken. Follow your instincts. Dig deep. And thank you, Nancy for inviting to do this interview!

My pleasure! Thank YOU!

Katherine DiBella Seluja is a poet and a nurse practitioner. She is the author of Gather the Night (UNM Press, 2018), a first poetry collection that focuses on the impact of mental illness. Winner of the Southwest Writers poetry award, her work has appeared in bosque, Broadsided Press, Claudius Speaks, Literary Orphans and Intima, among others. Her poem, “Letter to my suegra from Artesia, New Mexico” won honorable mention in the Santa Ana River Review contest, judged by then US poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. A collaborative poetry collection, We Are Meant to Carry Water, written with Tina Carlson and Stella Reed, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press in 2019. Katherine lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, her daughter and a cat called Fish.

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So You Wrote a Book? Steven Dunn

Steven Dunn has just released his new book, Water and Power! This book is a literary mosaic, collaging the two contradictory faces of the military: the official face of the recruiting posters and the real faces of the people, including Steven’s.

Nancy: Can you tell us what the book is about in exactly six words?

Steven: Challenging standard heroic/patriotic military narratives.

You call this book an ethnography, which is an anthropological term used when researching and then writing about a different culture. Some might argue that the military is not a culture but an organization. What are your thoughts?

I think it is both, organization and culture, like any work place has its own culture, but with the military you live and work in it. Plus it has its own laws, holidays, rituals, conventions, dress codes, behavior codes, and so on.

I see this book like a literary collage: Army codes, recruiting posters, comics and “official” language are presented as artifacts but also juxtaposed against your story and the stories of the other soldiers. Talk about your choice to go with this form as opposed to, say, a straight memoir?

I didn’t want a memoir because I was more interested in multiple truths instead of facts, so I call it a novel, plus there are some straight up speculative fiction elements. Like people argue over the facts of whether Chris Kyle (American Sniper memoir) killed 200 or 160 people. It’s an important fact, but focusing on those numbers ignores a lot of maybe more important truths about why/how this thing is celebrated and publicly worshipped, and the truth that that is a lot of killing. But mainly, I wanted to include other voices that don’t often show up in military literature, especially from women, people of color, LGBTQ voices, and voices from foreign civilian victims or our wars.

In this book you do a series of anonymous “subject interviews”. Did you find using this kind of source material made it easier to write the book or more challenging? How do you reconcile multiple visions?

Oh my god, yes, more challenging (at first), because I was trying to control it. But after a while of writing it, I knew I had to let the book be a mess, to be wild by letting these multiple visions collide and/or agree with each other, hoping to slow down the automated ways we think about the military. What helped me see this was Joyelle McSweeney’s quote in an essay on genre in Ghost Proposal: “I love when a structure is badly wired and it shorts out and sends up dazzling sparks and all kinds of fatal events.” So this book needed to be a badly wired ethnography that presents itself as one thing but shorts out and unravels into a hot mess (which is a lot of our experiences in the military) that we might or might not be able to make some sense of.

One moment that stood out for me was when one of your “subjects” says that he only joined the Army for the G.I. Bill…and so did all his friends. As a college professor I see many of these students on the other side, “cashing in” their G.I. Bills but also attempting to reconcile and write about their (often difficult) experiences in the military. Would you say this pathway into the military is typical? What would you say to a high school student considering this path for these reasons?

That answer is so complicated for me. I joined for the G.I. Bill also, but chose to go to a private university afterwards, which the G.I. Bill stopped fully funding private schools during my sophomore year in 2011. So it wasn’t completely worth it for me. But it’s been worth it for a lot of other people. So I’d tell a high school student that if that’s the only reason they’re joining, maybe consider a few other options first. But I also know that the military specifically recruits its enlisted members from below the poverty line, so sometimes that’s the only option for people.

You are donating 10% of the author proceeds to the International Refugee Committee. Can you tell us about this organization and why you feel passionate about it?

I’ll give the info from their website: The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief, and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution, or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in over 40 countries and 27 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient.

The IRC conducted operations across Iraq from April 2003 through December 2004. The organization resumed operations there in 2007, and is now expanding programs throughout the country. In addition to aiding displaced Iraqis within the country, the IRC is also providing assistance to Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria, as well as to those granted refuge in the United States

I’m often guilty and ashamed of having been in the military and benefitting from it socially and economically—and contributing to that organization who destroys other economies and people. So it’s important for me to contribute to the IRC, who is doing the opposite of what the military is doing: trying to keep people alive. This doesn’t absolve me or anything, or make me feel less guilty. I don’t know. I feel dumb talking about it sometimes because I haven’t worked it out yet, and don’t know if I ever will.

This isn’t your first book. You also published Potted Meat in 2016. How is Water and Power different from Potted Meat?

Potted Meat was narrow in geographic space (confined to one small town), and more internal, and ignorant of the past and future. It was very much focused on the mess of the present tense. water & power is wider in geographic space (Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, under the pacific ocean on a submarine), more external by including voices and viewing the military from multiple critical lenses. It also brings in histories and speculates on the future.

You are currently part of a project to bring Potted Meat to film. What is that experience like? Do you have to let go and let the director’s vision take over at some points?

The experience so far has been so damn great and collaborative. The director (Cory Warner) and producer (Flora Ortega) constantly check in with me in terms of the script and the visual tone. They want to stick as close to the book as possible, so whenever I need to let go and the directors’ vision take over, I’m totally fine with it. Which the only thing so far has been some arrangements of some of the stories to work for the film. I’m learning a lot about visual storytelling, and other filmmakers/films that I never knew about. But overall, it’s been cool as hell. My cousin, Drew Lipscomb, is producing the soundtrack, as well as rapping on it too, and some of my homies I grew up with are featured on it: Deep Jackson and C.Y.N. This shit is fire too!

You have published both your books with Tarpaulin Sky Press. Can you tell us about your road to publication and/or your publishing process?

I’d been a fan of Tarpaulin Sky for years, and loved that they published books that were wild as hell, that weren’t following many rules about what I used to think “literature” was, plus I knew they made beautiful books from the layout to cover design to paper quality. Tarpaulin only publishes 2-3 books every other year, so when I saw they had an open reading period, I submitted. Luckily I was one of the books chosen. It was in the contract that Tarpaulin could have first look at my second book, and if they wanted to publish it, I could say yes or no. So I got lucky again, and said yes because I love love love TS.

You are going to be one of the challengers in November 20th, “Fbomb Heavyweight Challenge of the Century” throwdown against Jonathan “Bluebird” Montgomery who said, “I feel confident going toe to toe with anyone at the mic.” The Vegas polls are tied. Can you give us any insights into your strategies for the match and what viewers should expect?

Bluebird, or Hummingbird as I call him (to get in his head), is a super high energy performer, so I’ll let him do what he does, he can flap his wings 80 times per second in the first few rounds, but he doesn’t have stamina, and then BAM, I’ll knock him out once he’s tired. That’s all folks!

Finally: What advice do you have for someone writing their first book?

Take your time, if you can afford it and aren’t dependent on books for income (not that we make money anyway). Take a musician and/or athlete approach to writing in terms of practice. And what worked for me, was to not submit it to 100 places, you know, the conventional wisdom of casting a wide net to better your chances. Tithe to the community: go to readings, write authors nice notes if you loved their books, interview people if you have a platform, review books.

Anything else you want to add?

Thank you for this interview, and all of the great questions. Oh, and I love your new book, and your performances of it.

Awww, thank you! The admiration is mutual. xoxo

Steven Dunn is the author of two novels, Potted Meat and water & power. Some of his work can be found in Granta and Best Small Fictions. He was born and raised in West Virginia.

So You Wrote a Book? Jonathan Montgomery

Jonathan “Bluebird” Montgomery has just released his new book, The Reality Traveler, a pop culture allegorical/philosophical tale with Jonny “Bluebird” as its picaresque narrator and Reality Traveling tour guide! Think Don Quixote meets the Alchemist meets the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Jonny, can you tell us what the book is about in exactly six words?

Do you like old songs too?

When you say the narrator is “reality traveling”, what do you mean by that?

The narrator has a mythological sense of himself and invents all this terminology to express how the world feels to him. Other people seem so different from him he thinks of them as their own ‘Realities.’At the same time he also sees himself on a God-given mission to meet (‘Travel’ to) and relate with (‘Me&You’) as many people as possible. So Reality Traveling pretty much means transcending differences, but it doesn’t come naturally for the narrator at all.

Where did you get the idea for reality traveling?

The whole book is based on a cross country road trip I took to my friends’ wedding years ago. It was like a weeklong whirlwind back and forth from Colorado to New Jersey, visiting everyone I knew along the way. Like one moment I’d be watching TV on the couch with my mom in Ohio and the next I’d be in a bar in New York City with a college friend and the next I’d be on the road again stopping at some middle-of-nowhere gas station in Illinois with a bunch of strangers. They really felt like separate Realities, and I realized how relating with each of them required following totally different sets of rules.

What are some of your favorite realities to travel to/through?

Alone Reality, which is just when you’re by yourself. In the book The Professor, who lectures on all the lessons of Reality Travel, considers Alone Reality a problem because you can’t actually Me&You anyone else there, but I never said I was a good Reality Traveler. I do like taking road trips to far off and exciting places, recently I’ve been traveling a lot to the Southwest. I’m drawn to the Desert.

So originally the Me&You “catchphrase” in this book was MeToo!, a catchphrase you have been using in your books for over a decade, and once the #Metoo movement started you had to make a decision about whether or not to keep it. Can you talk about that?

But additional thoughts for right now… I guess I connected with the phrase ‘me too’ because it was so commonplace and simple you almost didn’t realize the true beauty of it, and I wanted to draw attention to that. But because it was so common it was also foolish to feel like I had any ownership of it. I’m a supporter of the #metoo movement, but isn’t it weird how a phrase once so common and generic now means something so specific?

This isn’t your first book. You’ve also published Taxis and Shit and Pizzas and Mermaid. How is The Reality Traveler different from your other books?

Taxis & Shit is a book of poetry and stories. Pizzas and Mermaid is a book of mainly stories. Those are collections of open mic pieces, designed for performing during a 3-5 minutes slot.

The Reality Traveler, on the other hand, is a novel. The earliest versions were started while I was still in grad school a few years before I was really hitting the mics. It’s always been sort of this ongoing secret project which was more difficult to share in public because it was too long and too much would be out of context.

I think the shorter pieces in my earlier books individually are more poetic and pack a more aggressive punch, but I’m more proud of The Reality Traveler because I was somehow able to coordinate like 150 short episodes at once, interweaving several themes into a cohesive narrative. It took 13 years and was a huge focus of my creative life.

You have published with indie presses as well as self-publishing. Tell us about the publishing process for this book?

In the past I had friends with small presses who helped me. For The Reality Traveler I made an attempt to find an agent or a publisher, but nothing came of it. But I’ve always felt like conventional publishing is really weird and try to question everything we take for granted about it. We really seem to tie our self-esteem into some stranger deciding you’re a good enough writer to sell your work to other strangers. Is that really why we make art? It feels more natural that I’m just writing for myself and people in my community who really get me. Any greater ambition just seems to lead to suffering. So I actually put up the novel on a website for free this spring, posting one episode every day for a few months, and it was a spiritual exercise in not trying to care too much how many people actually viewed it. But the problem was I didn’t feel like the blog style format was a very reader friendly experience, so I decided to put it in print. And it’s pretty easy to do these days, and I did basically everything myself. I feel like I’m putting a picture on the fridge in just a more elaborate way. I think I’m okay with whatever result comes of it.

You have what’s being called a “SuperConcert” set up for the release of this book on November 10th in Boulder. What’s a SuperConcert? What should we expect? I heard Bono might be there?

The recorded voice of Bono might be there…

But yeah, Bluebird, the main character in The Reality Traveler, is a MusicMan Traveler who Me&Yous via The Great List of Old Songs, or at least tries to. The whole book he’s trying to get people to relate to this mix he made of old radio hits, with some disappointing results. In a way it’s about the naivety that I think a lot of kids who grew up in the suburbs in the 80-90’s shared, that pop culture would be enough to bring us all together. But in another way those songs can be pretty damn Me&You-able with certain people.

One of my favorite things ever is the Live Aid Concert from 1985, in which all the superstars of the day performed together for the cause of African hunger. So I wanted to do a mini version of that, where we get as many local musicians together for the cause of my novel, ha. There are 19 songs on the Great Trip Mix and 1 song on the Anti-Mix, and various bands will be doing live covers for most of them. I’ll be singing Journey and Springsteen. There will also be DJ Davi-D handling the rest as well as adding in his own flair.

Rather than just doing a typical book reading and having it feel all literary, I want it to feel like a party, a celebration for the completion of this thing that I spent so much effort on for so long. I’ll read some, but it will mainly be about the music and people having a good time.

You are also going to be one of the challengers in November 20th, “Fbomb Heavyweight Challenge of the Century” throwdown against Steven “Fatback Freddy” Dunn. The Vegas polls are tied. Can you give us any insights into your strategies for the match and what viewers should expect?

Steven Dunn is doing awesome right now and rightfully so. He may have more publications and awards and teaching and speaking opportunities and so forth, but I feel confident going toe-to-toe with anyone at the mic.

Finally: What advice do you have for someone writing their first book?

Every day I see advice from all these writers on social media, stuff like ‘read more’ or ‘write everyday.’ There’s a phoniness to it. It seems like advice they’re giving themselves, but they act like they’re some kind of authority for others. What if we got past this idea of caring whether your writing is good or bad? No advice anymore. No rules. Just do whatever feels right for you. If publishers think you suck and don’t like it, so what?

Anything else you want to add?

As the Goddess of Faith, The Guardian Angel character from the book would say, “It’s Alright, Baby!”

Jonathan Montgomery was born in 1980 in Akron, Ohio. He’s a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. His previous books are Taxis & Shit and Pizzas and Mermaid. He teaches English at Front Range Community College and lives in Boulder, Colorado.